Sermons represent copyrighted material and are not to be reproduced, transcribed, or used in any form without the permission of Rev. Chris Moore or the speaker for that day.

John 17:20-23

Perhaps you know the story – about 50 years ago the Stonewall bar there was police raid that lead to six days of skirmishes between young gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals and the New York Police Department in Manhattan’s West Village. The New York Postreported on June 28, 1969, that hundreds outside the bar had been observed chanting “Gay Power” and “We Want Freedom.” It was a major milestone in the fight for LGBTQ rights. And while Stonewall is a symbolic “line in the sand,” it is only a part of the story.

Stonewall was more than a bar. As reported in a piece from The Atlantic by Garance Franke-Ruta, Stonewall, “operated as a sort of de facto community center for gay youth rendered homeless by familial and institutional rejection, who had taken refuge in New York City in hopes of finding a place where they could be in the world. This continues, decades later, to be a major problem…about 40 percent of clients served by 354 youth service agencies were gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, and…the top reasons they were homeless were that they ran away in the face of family rejection or were kicked out by parents who could not accept their sexual orientation or gender identities.” And we are now living in a time in which some very hard won victories are being reversed by the current administration – specifically for transgender persons, who are being systematically written out of protections for housing, employment and healthcare. Now is when we need each other more than ever. See, it was Stonewall that started something – not an LGBT rights movement, that had already started long before, but perhaps, at least for the people in and around the West Village, and it was the idea of an LGBT community. And it’s the memory of Stonewall that symbolizes that idea to this day. We are no longer going to just “take it.” And we’re NOT going back.

Now, I think that it’s fair to say that this is a message you won’t hear from many pulpits in Tulsa today, and certainly not the day after that same church drove it’s float in the PRIDE parade. And I probably don’t need to remind you all of that, you are quite aware of the church you attend, and maybe that kind of pro-LGBTQ+ stance is one of the reasons you come here. But I thought you might want to be reminded, or to know in the first place, whywe take this stance.

We could start with the 6 passages in the Bible that supposedly condemn same-sex relationships, the so-called “clobber passages,” often the primary reason that other churches give for their stigmatization, and sometimes persecution, of LGBTQ+ persons, but that’s another sermon altogether. Suffice it to say that we simply don’t read the Bible the same way that other expressions of Christianity do – we are not literalists, we look at translation issues with the text, cultural differences between us and the culture of the Bible and we acknowledge that whatever Paul or Leviticus “supposedly” said about gay people, Jesus said zeroabout it. And since we are followers of Jesus, then we try to live how he would live…and we don’t think that hatred of people for how they were created.

But that position comes from somewhere. The reading you heard today is part of a larger prayer that Jesus prays for his disciples, for his community. It is only found in John’s gospel, and it is much longer than the snippet you heard. It asks for God’s presence among the people, for protection even, and for the words and deeds that Jesus has left us to still be with us, guiding and shaping them so that they might not be part of “the system,” which exploits and abuses, but set free, instead, for Love…sanctified in truth. It is a lofty prayer.

The part that we heard this morning also contains, as luck would have it, the foundational passage of scripture for our denomination, the United Church of Christ. It’s chapter 17, verse 21 – that they may all be one. Yes, sometimes verses of the Bible spring up right in the middle of sentences. That’s because for a long, long time, the Bible didn’t have chapter and verse, they were added later, apparently by monks who had been sampling too much of the ale they were brewing. So, here’s our founding slogan, partof a sentence in a singleverse from a singlechapter of onegospel.

“That they may all be one,” is the prayer. Besides protection, presence and this amazing wish for us to be in this system but not of this system, Jesus prays also for unity. That Greek word there is a conjugation of henosis, a word that comes from Greek philosophy, Neoplatonism to be specific. It doesn’t mean just “one,” like the number, but is a word with lots of mystical connotation. It means one-ness or union. The reason I think that’s important is that when we form community, one of the pitfalls is that we think that the forming has a finish line. Often with good intent and justifiable need for identity, we close the ranks of the club and while that might be good for those who are already members, it often perpetuates the same exclusion that made the need for the “club” so important in the first place. And it doesn’t foster anything even remotely like unity, which ought to mean something more like wholeness.

The cry for “unity” , however, is so often used as a silencer of dissent, it is used against people as they raise the subject of injustice and get accused of being “divisive.” Why don’t we all just come together – without changing any of the power structures? This is what makes “unity” so difficult to achieve – it cannot be about agreement. People can disagree and still love each other, which is a kind of unity, but they can’t do that if the disagreement is rooted in someone else’s oppression, or the denial of their humanity. Too often the call for unity is just a chance to flex power or privilege.

Unity can also be used to say, “Well, you are welcome…you are welcome to come here and be just like us.” In other words, the unity is connected to your capitulation, to your ability to “fit in.” Unity, however, has to change everyone involved, or it isn’t unity, it’s uniformity, defined by the people who are already in. We can only find something as elusive and mysterious as “unity” in the journey, working together to seek something that none of us possess, having the courage to seek encounters outside of our bubbles, and the willingness to be changed by those encounters.

The UCC was formed in 1957 in order to seek this so-called unity by joining together different denominational expressions of Christianity, a task that made little sense on paper and proved to be much messier and more complicated than any of us imagined. It began and continued on this notion of drawing the circle wider. And, as it turns out, when you draw the circle wider you find out that you just need to draw it wider still. As the UCC drew new circles on race and gender and sexuality we kept finding the need to expand.

This prayer, in John’s gospel, is how Jesus leaves his disciples, at least in the physical sense. If he had wanted to, Jesus could have given us a bunch of structure, some set liturgy, rules and policies. But that’s not what he did. He gave us set us up to be flexible, open to the movement of the Spirit, searching for the work of a God who is still-speaking, still creating new things in a world that seems hell-bent on trapping God in the concrete of certainty. Jesus give us the gift of a life of faith, uncertain and forever changing, just like the boundaries of our circle should be – growing, expanding, forever becoming new.

If you ask me, that’s part of the joy of PRIDE. Sure there’s some celebration of freedom there, a chance for some to wear outfits out in public that they don’t get to wear any other time – and in a few cases, probably for good reason. It’s party time for some, time with friends and family, a time to sing and dance and be happy. And it is also a time in which that circle, drawn wider, is visible. Six city councilors marched in the parade yesterday, for the first time the city was represented. So many corporate and civic groups, churches and synagogues, temples and the organized atheist community all there to make claim on the wider circle. It is a chance, on a large scale, for people who are scared and lonely and hiding to see others telling them that they are not a mistake and they are not alone.

That is the same reason we are an open & affirming church, because we believe that message lines up exactlywith the message of Jesus. We are to be a place where people can feel loved, not judged, where people can be hugged and accepted, not shunned and rejected. We think that church ought to be a place where God’s Love is writ large, and God’s Grace known to everyone, inside these walls and beyond. We work here to give the rights to everyone that we claim for ourselves, because that’s what we mean by unity.

The dream of this prayer is still not real. We still have much work to be done on justice not only for the LGBTQIA+ community, but for so many other marginalized groups. And at a time in which there is much effort to move us backwards, so much violence and anger and hatred, we must first pay attention to our own circles, making connections when and where we can, seeking understanding and shared witness, coming again to the table where all are welcome, drawing our circle ever wider. For this prayer still works on us, pushing us to seek our wholeness in the wholeness of others, to build on a foundation of love…the love that exists beyond “like,” the love to which we are subject, like a discipline, that asks us again and again to look at what we create…where are the boundaries of our circle? Because here, at this church, we know that whatever border we establish, Jesus is likely on the other side of it.

Sermons represent copyrighted material and are not to be reproduced, transcribed, or used in any form without the permission of Rev. Chris Moore or the speaker for that day.

John 14:23-29

May 26^th, 2019

The word in Greek for peace is eirene.It means the absence of war, at least in the classic Greek. But it was used to translate the Hebrew word shalom, and in the process of language influencing language, eireneslowly showed the signs of shalom, which means something much more like wholeness, or right relationship. In the New Testament, the word eireneis not primarily associated with resolution of political conflict, good health, personal well being or even prosperity. It is associated with words like love, grace, glory, honor, righteousness and mercy. It is about you and your state of being, it’s about your relationship– in this case, to God.

Maybe this seems like a strange week to think about peace, for there’s been little peace as we’ve tried to calm down our pets during the last week of endless sirens and thunderclaps, or comfort children…or even ourselves. We’re all still pretty tired from a relentless week, from a scary and late night last night, even as we’re probably not ones who have lost houses and possessions, nor sat and watched as the flood waters inched towards our houses. We’ve all lost some portion of our sense of “peace” after days and days of wind, weather and water. PLUS we had an earthquake in there, right? I mean, when do the locusts arrive? Combine that with the threats of war, Constitutional and political crisis, the unknown impact of tariffs, churches in conflict, a broken immigration system, and what seems like another shooting every day and peace seems a LONG way off, probably just as long as it did for the disciples.

It is likely that we define peace the way the disciples do in this passage, as something external. This entire chapter in John’s gospel is the disciples reconciling the news that Jesus is leaving them, the source of their peace departing. Jesus tells them he’s not leaving them alone, and he sets before them a path to peace, while trying to emphasize that this can’t reside in him alone, they must internalize it. Thepeace that Jesus leaves is a gift of God, and it comes in the form of a process in which we give over to God a certain amount of control of all the things that we worry about. It’s a peace that recognizes our own limits to what we can affect or achieve on our own, placing ourselves, our loved ones, and our future in God’s hands.

Often that is a difficult task at best. How do we seek stability within the chaos, knowing that an end to the chaos is unlikely? Chaos is, at least in one way of looking at it, the natural state of things. Life is always in flux, moving, shifting, bending the rules with which we think we control the life around us. So when we look for peace only in the absence of chaos and conflict, we will find little peace. That’s what I think Jesus means when he says, “I don’t give as the world gives,” a phrase that actually, in Greek, says, “I don’t give as this systemgives.” The Greek word kosmosis always translated world, but really means the systems in place that shape our world. And our systems thrive on chaos, they need it…they seek and protect and even create it. Our systems commodify peace, selling it to us with the promise of a war that will produce it, a candidate who will provide it, or a product that will create it. It’s always external, waiting for conditions to change out there. But the peace that Jesus leaves is internaland it comes in a certain way.

First, you love Jesus. Now, not in a church camp, sing-songy kind of way, but by loving the things that Jesus stands for – compassion, justice, hope, trust. If you love those things, you love Jesus. And if you love Jesus, then you “keep” his “word,” meaning that you do the things that a love of compassion, justice, hope and trust would haveyou do. If you want peace, act peacefully. If you don’t know how to do that, then step one hasn’t happened yet, Jesus says. First you love me thenyou follow my instructions…for if you don’t love me you won’t really follow my instructions. They are too hard. If you don’t seek peace, you won’t find it. If you don’t follow the things that Jesus followed, you won’t find the peace that Jesus found.

Of course, the catch is that it can be very hard to know exactly howto show compassion or to seek justice, it’s a challenge to hope or to trust, particularly in a world so hopeless and untrustworthy. And it’s not like you can text Jesus when you’re stumped. So the formula has some addendums. First, we are not alone. That’s a really, really critical one. We are not alone. We have each other and we have been sent the paraclete…not the parakeet, the paraclete. I mean, a parakeet would be cute, but not super helpful during moral dilemmas. The paracleteis the Greek word for the Holy Spirit, at least from the way that our tradition has built this word up. It means consoler, counselor, or helper and the theological idea is that the Spirit resides with and among us to help us figure out how to live out the word that Jesus has left us. So, love + doing + help from the Spirit = Peace.

Jesus asks us to dohis word, not to listen and understand, but to do. For there is something in the practice of caring, in the discipline of loving someone or something you don’t wantto love that re-wires us and trains our hearts and minds for something new. Jesus, you might have heard, acknowledges that there are other voices. He says there are words that aren’t his, and the way that we love him is not to say those words, or offer endless praise songs, or get the right Hebrew phrase tattooed on our forearm. It is to behim – not in the sense of miraculous and larger-then-life, but in the sense of being like him as much as we can, pursuing justice and seeking peace. This is what I think Jesus means when he says, “Knock and the door will be opened.” He doesn’t say, “Stand there and pray really hard and the door will be opened.” He asks us to DO, to work for, to seek, to create, to hope and even to long for what we want in an assertive way that knows we are worthy of it. And the door will be opened.

Peace is not something you can achieve on a situational basis. You cannot decide to just turn it on when you think you need it and ignore it the rest of the time. Faith is the same way. You have to practice it, use it, and engage it…or it’s like me baking a cake, pretty much a complete gamble. Peace has to come from within, it cannot be generated by our situations, but must be generated despiteour situations. We can see this in discussions about the reduction of nuclear weapons, discussions which never include trying to reduce the things that make for war.

As the great Buddhist monk and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote, “We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uprootwar from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women.”

Uprooting is precisely what Jesus is up to with his work. He does not promise us that our faith life will end our suffering, nor will everything in life suddenly calm down and make perfect sense. Instead he offers us a way to keep steady during the tremors, a practice to help us keep our footing as the chaotic waters rush by us. Jesus gives us his peace for us to use, not to hoard or admire, but to use. It really is one reason that we start each service by passing the peace. I know that this sometimes seems more like a social engagement time, just a moment to say hi and then move on, but the practice is that we say, “Peace be with you,” and someone responds, “And also with you,” as a mantra of sorts…a social mantra said not in the embrace of meditation, but in the wide-eyed gathering of all of us, each bringing our own chaos to the mix of church and stating to one another what it is that we seek – peace. It may seem just a couple of minutes of small-talk, but particularly when we take the time to look in one another’s eyes and actually “stick to the script,” what it really does is defy the system of our own time, it reaches into the chaos and claims a solid rock on which we can stand…it asserts that in the end everything will be OK, and if it’s not OK, it’s not the end…it lays a claim on our hearts and minds in the search for peace, which we both give and receive in that simple moment.

Peace is a beautiful thing to seek…a challenging, elusive, frustrating thing that requires us to know ourselves, to learn to find our centers, developing an eye for the invisible and an ear for the silent, seeking the influence and guidance of the Spirit that works on us somewhere other than our rational mind, and remembering, always remembering, to breathe. The beauty of the physics of peace is that there really is no equation…working the equation is the equation…for there truly is no way to peace, peace is the way.

Peace be with you…

Sermons represent copyrighted material and are not to be reproduced, transcribed, or used in any form without the permission of Rev. Chris Moore or the speaker for that day.

Psalm 34:15-22 (The Inclusive Psalms translation)

Acts 11:1-9 (CEB translation)

In 2004, I was living in Edmond with Kathy and our then 20 month-old, Ian, and a brand new baby, Alec. I was working at Baptist Hospital as a project manager for a group of physicians and, inexplicably, had also started seminary. Soon I would be working 30 hours a week at the paying gig, studying for a Masters of Divinity, teaching a Bible Study class at Mayflower UCC, the church that was my home, and starting a new UCC church in Norman. I did also try to change some diapers and see my children from time to time. This was also the time period in which we had to hospitalize my mother during a mental health crisis.

This is not a story I have told from the pulpit before – the story of my mom’s struggle with depression that suddenly became a fight with mania – and I haven’t told it before not because there haven’t been opportunities, but because for the better part of my ministry, at every church I served, my mom was sitting on the second row. I didn’t want to tell that story with her there. Why is that? Well, in part I do think it would have embarrassed her, but it was also my fear for myself. Mental health is a very stigmatized thing in our culture, particularly in the church. What would it be like for people in the church to know that their pastor has a mother with “those” problems? Do they start re-reading my own eccentricities? Would I get branded and treated differently? And how did I process the shame that I didn’t want, but felt anyway? Of course, I was never ashamed of my mother, nor did I really think that little of the congregations I have served.

This month is Mental Health Awareness month, and the UCC, along with other denominations, is making an effort to spread good information and resources, as well as hope and strength. There is no way, of course, that I could speak on such a vast subject with any thoroughness at all without a sermon that would be, I assume, unacceptably long. There is, of course, the statistical reality that all of us will be touched by mental illness at some point in our lives, and that should be reason alone to educate ourselves. But there’s more. Part of our responsibility as an “open & affirming church” is to draw the circle wider, to open the doors that have been shut, so often by the very church culture of which we are a part, like it or not. We may think, “Hey, that’s not OUR church,” but the reality is that for many people out there, church is church. So we have to strive to make our difference known. And, truth be told, we are still somewhat reluctant to talk about mental health, even here at our church, whether it is our own, or that of a loved one. That reluctance makes it difficult to reach out, and perhaps keeps us from providing the kind of care we might with any other kind of illness.

We live, in some respects, in the same type of culture that Peter lived in, with hierarchies and the clear demarcation of “clean” and “unclean.” In Peter’s world, what gender you were, what physical characteristics you had, even what tribe you belonged to – all of which are out of your control – could make you clean or unclean. What food you ate, how you farmed, even what you wore could make you clean or unclean. Here in our world, any number of things can make you unclean – a second class citizen. Documentation, skin color, gender, gender expression, sexuality, class, prior convictions, to name a few…and, yes, mental illness.

If you are unclean, in this system we share with Peter, you are less than, discountable, even disposable. You might be unclean with a chance to get clean again, or you could be permanently unclean, meaning you were always less than, always discountable, always disposable. Think of felony convictions in our culture – do you ever really stop serving your time? Even after you are released from your sentence, voting restrictions, a curtailed freedom and an ever present “check the box” part of employment keep you from moving back into the clean category. When we don’t talk about it, when we don’t acknowledge how mistakes and bad decisions impact us all in different ways, we completely disable the process of renewal or reconciliation. And, in the case of mental illness or addiction, we don’t get a chance to acknowledge how our choices are impacted by the things that happen far beyond our control. In fact, we don’t get to talk about how little control we actually have, which is a much more difficult conversation to have.

That’s why it is so critical for us to talk about mental illness like we might talk about heart disease or cancer. While there are certainly choices we can make to decrease our factors in getting heart disease or cancer, when someone does get it, there are very few who would suggest that it’s their fault, or that they should just try harder. Yet we often do that with mental illness, in part because of our awareness – or lack thereof – of how it operates, and what can be done for treatment.

Maybe it’s more common to hear theology like we heard from the Psalm today, where God protects all those who need protection, and heals all wounds, delivers the endangered, defends the weak, but we know that’s not true. The Psalm is aspirational, not informational. It is a beacon to hope, not a descriptor of how things are. It helps us imagine a time in which things are better, one of the basic ingredients in healing. You have to have hope and you have to have truth.

Recently a colleague recounted a story about a pastor friend of his who served a big church and was a drug addict. It was secret for so long, and he tried to quit but never could beat it. Finally, more as an act of desperation than anything else, he admitted to his congregation that he had this illness, and it was only then that he found the support and ability to fight his addiction effectively. The quote from him that my colleague remembers is, “We are only as damaged as the things we keep secret.”

What happens for Peter on that rooftop is an eye-opening experience to say the least. It completely transforms his viewpoint, shifting his entire paradigm so fully that he almost sees a different God. He goes on to tell his fellow disciples that the work of Jesus is the work of disabling the clean and unclean system, understanding the extend of God’s Grace and the implications of that for us as individuals and for the world we create. It really is more than a simple re-classification of some things from one category to another. Peter’s dream – and his reaction to it – asks us to do our ownwork on the walls we bless and sanctify. For we might find out that they aren’t God’s walls at all. In fact, we might found out that God doesn’t build walls, we do, and God plays this whole game differently than we can even imagine.

The movement of the Spirit in the Book of Acts has an endgame, and that isn’t merely drawing the circle wider, though that it a good place to start. It’s about drawing it so wide that the circle becomes meaningless, thereby eliminating the circle altogether. It is that story which ought to shape our own hearts, and then, in turn, the way that we look at the world around us. Immigration, education, justice, healthcare, human rights, mental health – all of these issues ought to be shaped by the endless expansion of God’s Love, helping us see the world and each other as God sees us. As we move through this Sunday where we lift up those who struggle with mental illness, those who care for them and those impacted by mental illness – in other words as we lift ALL of us up – let this work be a chance to realize that the “them” we think are not “us” are one and the same – it’s just us.

Thanks be to God.

Sermons represent copyrighted material and are not to be reproduced, transcribed, or used in any form without the permission of Rev. Chris Moore or the speaker for that day.

Acts 9:36-43 & John 10:22-30 (CEB)

The disciples, our stories tell us, were not saints from the outset. They made mistakes, sometimes HUGE mistakes. They tried, they failed, they learned. They learned by notknowing where they were going, what they needed to do, or how they would accomplish it…and going anyway. Peter – the one who was quick to deny Jesus when the pressure was on, and who was asked by Jesus if he loved him not once, but three times because of the uncertainty – that samePeter, in the Book of Acts, goes from, “Jesus? Never heard of him”, to performing miracles. He learns a lot.

In our passage today, Peter raises a woman named Tabitha. Tabitha is a woman of great prominence in Joppa, where Peter is residing at the time. She is a leader, and likely a woman of some means, for she is known for her charity and care for those in need. She is also the only woman in the New Testament referred to with the Greek wordmathetria, which is the term for a female disciple. This means that not only was she a leader and a model, she was a disciple, a term we don’t find used even for Mary Magdalene, though she is present with Jesus through the most difficult parts of his life and is the one person all our gospels agree was at the tomb on Easter morning. Tabitha, we can surmise, was kind of a big deal. But that’s not why she is raised. The women gathered around her deathbed, in their grief, pull out the clothing she made them, each tunic with a story of connection and support. Perhaps they told stories of her care during a crisis, or her willingness to give of herself, but it wasn’t because of anything that Tabitha had…it’s because of who she was.Tabitha used her privilegeto help people and that kind of willingness to be vulnerable, to stand in solidarity, that is what evokes God’s power, that is what gets “raised up,” bringing life beyond the life that we will all lead.

God raises her, our story tells us, through Peter, who calls her by name and tells her, quite literally, to get up. In Greek, it’s like asking her to go from a reclining position to a standing position. And it’s the same word that these Jesus followers in the Book of Acts will begin to use with one another, like in chapter 22 when they call on one another to “rise up, be baptized and call on the name of Jesus.” It’s the same word, in Greek, that you might yell to your teenager in the morning from the kitchen as you are trying to get all your stuff done and they’re still not up and you have to leave in three minutes so they won’t be late…I mean, I guess. So he says it, and Tabitha “gets up.” The text says that Peter presents her, “alive to them.” That word being translated “alive” iszao(dzah-o)and while it doesmean “not dead,” it’s not the same word you’d used to talk about something that is living. It’s the word that you’d use to talk about something that is active and powerful – something like what we might call the “essence” of life.

I’m not going to tell you what to think about resurrection here, whether or not Tabitha was dead and is now alive in a scientific kind of way like we insist on thinking about it. What I’m going to say instead is that the earliest followers of Jesus began to experience not only Jesus resurrected, but resurrection itself. Their post-Easter lives began to be marked by the sense of God resurrecting things. Tabitha is another thing on a growing list of evidence for the disciples that life is, in fact, stronger than death and that while someone – well, everyone, in fact – can die, the essence of their life can be quite alive. The real question about resurrection in these stories is not how does God raise things up, but rather, whatdoes God raise up?

In the Irish language there is a saying – Ar scath a cheile a mhaireas na daoine (er ska a chilay a mhar na deene’) – which means, loosely translated, “it is in the shelter of each other that the people live.” Yet Irish, an inherently loose language, much like ancient Hebrew, has more than one meaning for any given word. Scath can also be translated as “shadow,” meaning that it is just as accurate to translate this phrase as, “People live in each other’s shadows.” Either way, we are shielded from a hard sun by each other, we relyon each other for shelter, we live nextto one another…we do actually needeach other.

When Jesus is confronted by his disciples seeking confirmation, they ask him – just be straight with us, are you the messiah or not? It’s an understandable question, for at the core of theological questions is a comfort with the lack of answers…faith cannot be confirmed. That’s why it’s faith, not certainty. But we all want, in a very gray world, to have something solid on which to set our feet. Just tell us, Jesus – no parable, no zen koan, no deep, indecipherable moral lesson – just a yes or a no. And not only does Jesus refuse, he answers with what seems like a harsh response. “I have told you, and you do not believe,” the text says, and you can almost hear the frustration in his voice. And then the icy clincher: “You do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.”

ButIbelong to your sheep, I can almost hear people crying out, from the disciples gathered around him to people right here in these pews, to this guy standing behind the pulpit. I’ve been baptized, I go to church every Sunday and know my Bible and love the liturgy and say my prayers. I’min the fold, right? At first glance, Jesus’s reply might appear to suggest that belonging to him depends on believing in him. But in fact, what Jesus says isexactly the opposite: you struggle to believe because you don’t respond to the belonging. In other words, belief doesn’t come first, belonging does. It’s as if realizing, really embracing that we need each other is the first step in our own personal wholeness.

Why is that? Well, I don’t know. I don’t makethe rules, I just slowly realize that I’m pretty sure that I think I possibly understand what they might be. But here’s what I think I know now – rightnow, as in 11 o’clock-ish on a Sunday morning in May: We do need each other. We belongto each other. And when we accept this little pearl of both curse and wisdom, it works on us. We begin to see things differently. Our responsibilities, our hopes, our dreams, our expectations, our possibilities – they all change. The deeper we accept it, the less we can categorize people away, the less we can dismiss them, the less we can dehumanize. Only if we belong to the idea that we belong can we actually trust in a Jesus who says that everyone belongs.

This past week I have been fortunate enough, along with some of you, to attend an interfaith iftar dinner, which is the ritual meal in Islam to break each day’s fast during the month of Ramadan, which is happening now for our Muslim siblings. It was another chance to sit in a room with a diversity of people from across our city – different faiths, different races, different genders and tribes and professions – and it was a stark reminder in days in which we see violence and hatred aimed directly at our differences, that we need one another…violence against one is violence against all. We belong to each other.

The aim of such interfaith dialogue and our own faith lives is not disconnected at all. In fact, they are one and the same. For learning to see our neighbor as our sibling, peeling back the scales of tribalism from our eyes to see that we are all God’s children is what our practice is all about. Jesus didn’t want to say “yes” to the messiah question because that would have put his followers right back in the same mindset – us versus them.

This is an important reminder as many of us will gather at the county commissioner’s meeting on Monday morning to voice our opposition to 287g, the contract that connects our county law enforcement to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of our federal government, deputizing our local deputies and incentivizing the kind of division and xenophobic policies that we have seen for decades in a broken immigration system. We do this because the borders we put up – this country, that country – are indicators of how we have not accepted that we need each other, beyond nationalities, beyond tribes. We do this because we know that we can no longer afford to see the world as us versus them. It is literally killing us all. The same is true of poverty, homelessness, education, mental health, immigration, crime and punishment and so much else– does our vision for those systems change when we begin with the belief that we belong to each other?

If Jesus had just answered “yes” to the messiah question, the gears would have begun spinning, because the people around him not only suspected strongly that he was the messiah, they also knew what a messiah does – and they would look to him to build an army, to fight the Romans and to sit on the throne in Jerusalem. And Jesus’ throne wasn’t like that at all. By refusing to “speak plainly” and simply claim that loaded title with all it’s implications, Jesus’ fuzziness instead asked them, and us, to look more deeply, to wonder about our role in the kin-dom, and to invest ourselves in this messy and uncertain thing called life. That’s the thin about the kin-dom that Jesus ushers in — one doesn’t simply profess belief in such a mysterious thing— one lives into it, questions into it…growsinto it.”

Sometimes it may seem like we’re more interested in a Christianity of certainty, with boundaries neatly drawn, protecting us from a world that seems strange or unfamiliar, where we don’t have to step into the muddy pasture, surrounded by these other sheep. But that’s not what Jesus offers. He offers us the holy work of inclusion and community, the work of the Gospel.

And it’s good work…especially when we do it in the shelter of one another.

Sermons represent copyrighted material and are not to be reproduced, transcribed, or used in any form without the permission of Rev. Chris Moore or the speaker for that day.

John 21:1-18 (Common English Bible translation)

My senior year of high school we did “Fiddler on the Roof” for the musical. I auditioned for Tevye, the overthinking, hyper-protective father role that I still feel destined for. My best pal got that role and I ended up doubly cast – as one of the bottle dancers in the big wedding scene and, you guessed it, the Rabbi. I guess my fate was set early on.

There are many songs in the production that are wonderful – “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Matchmaker,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” but I think that my favorite – or at least the one that holds a special place in my heart, is “Do You Love Me?” It’s a tender, short little song between Tevye and Golde, his wife. After all of the chaos around his daughter’s marriage and her rejection of tradition in the name of her heart, Tevye is overthinking about love and begins to wonder about his own marriage. “Do you love me?”, he sings to Golde as she’s simply trying to get her chores done. “Do I love you?”, she fires back. What kind of a question is that?

For twenty-five years, I’ve washed your clothes,
Cooked your meals, cleaned your house,
Given you children, milked the cow.
After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?

Tevye presses her further – evoking images of their own wedding, steeped in tradition, and the promise of their own parents that they wouldgrowto love one another. So, he asks again – “Do you love me?”

For twenty-five years, I’ve lived with him,
Fought with him, starved with him.
For twenty-five years, my bed is his.
If that’s not love, what is?

Tevye breaks into a big grin – so, you love me? And he sits by her on that same bed, her unfolded laundry in her lap and they both say those words – I love you – as they sing together, with an appropriate bit of harmony: It doesn’t change a thing, but even so, after twenty-five years, it’s nice to know.

We should notice that at no point in Jesus and Peter’s little love song does Peter use the method Golde uses – why are you asking me this, Lord? Look at what I’ve done! Instead, Peter uses a much more common technique – look at what Isay, Lord! You want me to say it again? How about louder? When I marry people, I often say an adaptation of words attributed to St. Francis to the couple – be sure to say “I love you” often. Use words when necessary. See, trust and love are funny things. They both grow only with action. Saying, “trust me,” is only good if you are a person in whom I already have trust. And the same is true of love, which is like a bank for us where we store up capital and make deposits and withdrawals until, perhaps, at some point, we decide to close the account…or maybe we have so much, we open up a savings account to hold all our reserves.

Jesus replies to Peter by saying it again – do you Love me? He pushes Peter, asking three times not only, I think, because that’s a very biblical thing to do – things often happen in threes – but also because he doesn’t think that Peter is really getting it. Peter, is conveniently forgetting that the number of times Jesus has asked him if he loves him matches perfectly with the number of times he denied him at the cross. He thinks he has reserves, when Jesus is really asking him to make some deposits. So Jesu makes it clearer by switching his language from word to deed and says, “OK, I’ll take you at face value, Peter. I’ll trust you. So, ifyou love me…feed my sheep.”

Archaeologists and art researchers tell us that the earliest Christian imagery, the first art from the young Jesus movement’s development, depicts not cross or fish, not the table or the chalice or the crucifix, but rather the shepherd. It’s not a random image, but something straight out of the words of the prophet Ezekiel, who predicts in his oracles of comfort and hope to a Hebrew people in exile of a restoration of paradise, with abundant pastures tended by a shepherd. Jesus is marked very early on as the shepherd, which is not a familiar image to us. Anyone here know a shepherd? Anyone have an uncle or a cousin who’s a shepherd? If you said Jesus was a plumber, or an architect, or a blogger, we’d know what that was – but a shepherd?

A shepherd, to help us embrace this metaphor, seeks out the missing sheep, rescues those in danger, feeds them and leads them to life-giving water, cares for the sick ones and gives strength to the weak. These images from Ezekiel are used to inform the imagery around Jesus, calling him to Good Shepherd, and to make a claim on the followersof the Good Shepherd. At some point in the metaphor, we move from sheep to shepherd…weare to seek the missing, rescue the troubled, feed and give life, heal and give strength. There’s nary a piece in there about doctrinal purity or creedal accuracy.

But make no mistake. “Feed my sheep,” is not a soft ask. There are wolves and coyotes out there. And beyond that surface danger, the sheep of Jesus always seem to graze on the other side of the fences we’ve established. They live on the across the tracks, on the other bank of the river, on the other side of the wall. Barbara Brown Taylor says we turn this ask for love into a “lambs and rainbows” moment, as if Jesus is asking us to just be “nice” to each other. It’s a vague, beneficial feeling towards a generalized other. There’s no cost, no surrender, no change or transformation. It’s “don’t worry, be happy” on an endless loop, when it’s really be troubled a lot, by a Gospel that is both comforting and disruptive, grace-filled and demanding.

What Jesus is asking Peter for – again and again and again – is to give the kind of love he has given. He’s asking him to not only see “the other,” and to love “the other,” but to be willing to give, to sacrifice, for “the other.” It’s a dangerous and bold ask, which is why he asks Peter so many times. Peter’s yes, Jesus realizes, is to something different, and Jesus wants to make sure he knows what he’s saying yes to, for there is an important distinction between what Peter calls love and what Jesus calls love. When Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?”, he is asking him to showthis, not to say it.

Tevye and Golde have a lesson for us as well. Anyone can say, “I love you,” but can they show it. Can they say, “I love you,” without saying a word? And then, the lesson goes, you can also show your love over and over, and forget to say it. See, we need both. We live in a time in which a cultural Christianity makes a claim on the words – say you love Jesus and you can go on about your business, with nary a regard for the missing, the wounded, the hungry, the sick or the weak. It’s a claim on the power, without the vulnerability of need or weakness. For such a claim, Jesus would ask again, and again, and again – do you love me? Then feed my sheep.

And then there’s a progressive Christianity, one that leans very heavy on deeds, having no issue with trying to live out our faith, and yet that same progressive tradition has trouble with the words, “I love Jesus.” We shy away from that because we’ve witnessed it being so misused, so abused and twisted. We shy away from it because it gets us out of our heads and into our hearts, and it’s a vulnerable place. So, in the name of saying, “We’re Christians, but not like THAT,” we’ve set aside the very thing that might replenish our souls, weary from the work of the world. For we need both. We need the word and the deed. We need to be able to say, “I love you, Jesus,” AND to show it with the way we live our lives.

This is the beginning of trust, to know both sides of this – the word and the deed, the promise and the action, the Christ and the Christian. And Jesus knows that trust is a better compliment than love, so he seeks from his disciples that trust – which is only created when actions meet words. Jesus’ resurrection call is aspirational…we hear the words, we share the dream, we take the action. He has to ask Peter again and again and again because he wants to make sure that Peter – and by extension all of us – is connecting himself to Love – a Love that will make demands, a Love that will make us change our minds and hearts, a Love that we will be subject to, not the other way around. No longer, as he says with a metaphor of age, will we tie our own belt and walked around wherever we want, but instead we will stretch out our hands and another will tie our belt and lead us where we don’t want to go.

There is a wisdom in this seaside appearance of Jesus – that we, like Peter, might come to understand that we need both a rigorous, active faith that comes from within us and something to which we are subject, a Christ who has risen and a God who did the raising, so that there is a name to evoke against the power and evil and injustice in the world when it feels as though our actions alone will never prevail. Like Peter, we can understand that faith is something we live, to something we possess or wield or weaponize. Like Peter, we need to both love Christ and Love likeChrist. We must have both so that God’s miracles don’t become somiraculous as to be useless, vacuous…they must live inus and through us to be of any good. It’s the words that may connect and inspire us, butit’s the deeds that will transform us. When Golde says, “I love you,” it’s because of the work of those deeds on her own heart, and when Tevye repeats it back, it’s for the same reason. They have grown a love out of action, which is something that faith actually lives for…it is the work of faith.

Christianity lost a powerful voice for the work of faith this weekend – a voice which lifted up doubt and lack of belief, mistrust and the need for community as Holy things. Rachel Held Evans, a self-described “ex-vangelical,” who found a home in the liturgy and mystery of the Episcopalian tradition, died at the age of 37 – far too soon. She made a name for herself re-imagining her upbringing, embracing the #BlackLivesMatter and LGBTQ+ movements and taking on her tradition. She is known for her words, but the witness in the days since her death is as much to her deeds of kindness, inclusion and hopeful engagement. She once wrote, “I thought God wanted to use me to show gay people how to be straight. Instead God used gay people to show me how to be Christian.” And she also wrote,“Imagine if every church became a place where everyone is safe, but no one is comfortable. Imagine if every church became a place where we told one another the truth. We might just create sanctuary.” She reminded us that, “If you want to do violence in this world, you will always find the weapons. If you want to heal, you will always find the balm.” She spoke of this table as something to which we are subject, a table that she said was not my table or your table, but Jesus’ table – and all who are hungry are welcome. She connected words to deeds and while I will most remember her by her words, we can all remember her in our deeds, as we ought to remember Jesus who, in the words of Ms. Evans, “was ready to stop waging war and start washing feet.”

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Sermons represent copyrighted material and are not to be reproduced, transcribed, or used in any form without the permission of Rev. Chris Moore or the speaker for that day.

Resurrection Life
John 20:26-31 & Acts 5:27-41 (CEB)

We are in this “post-Easter” time when we kind of take a break in church. Some pulpits will be filled by guest preachers today, as we enter a period of rest, the frenetic pace slowing a little so we can re-group, getting ready for that final push before summer begins. I’m not sure why we slow down, though…it’s as if the resurrection is the culmination of the impact of Jesus, when it is really just the beginning. The disciples lives got much busier post-Easter, for as they slowly accept the resurrection, they accept much more than just an empty tomb…they accept resurrection lives.

Much of the New Testament is the unraveling of the resurrection, an account of how the reality of a risen Christ also means the embrace of the “Jesus Plan”, a reinforcement of the inherently social, cultural and political implications of a Gospel that announces power to the powerless, hope to the hopeless, forgiveness to the unforgivable…life from death. This was a subversive message during the times in which our scriptures were written. Saying “Jesus is Lord” today is a bumper sticker, proclaimed with pride, openly and loudly. But then the claim “Jesus is Lord” was not only a direct confrontation to “Caesar is Lord,” but also considered a ridiculous, foolish claim to everyone around them…a dangerous act of resistance.

It was also the start of the resurrection life.

At the end of John’s version of the gospel story, we hear an account of this post-Easter, resurrection life in the familiar account of “doubting Thomas. A lot of shadow has been cast at Thomas, but he is more like us that anyone – wanting to trust, but to verify, to have faith only if there’s a guarantee which, of course, isn’t faith. But before we cast aside Thomas, we ought to recognize that he seems to know what is at stake, maybe even more than any of the other disciples. If this is the resurrected Jesus…if this is the promise made real…if this is God’s “Yes” to the Jesus plan, then it changes everything. Of course he wants some verification – who wouldn’t?

The Book of Acts is Luke’s attempt to tell the post-Easter story that we don’t get from any of the other gospels, save for a few days after. Luke carries the story out, letting us see the impact of the resurrection life on the disciples, now called apostles, and the community in which they live. The section from Acts this morning marks the second time that some religious leaders have arrested, detained, and interrogated the apostles for preaching (and for living) the resurrection of Jesus. And once more they declare what they have declared before – their resolve to privilege the call of God over and against human authority.

This can be a blessing or a curse. Sometimes privileging God’s law over human law is a positive thing – like the civil rights movement. Other times it can be much more sinister and disturbing. This assertion of the disciples that you sometimes have to buck the system to be faithful raises a critical question – how do you tell? How do you know when you are “following the will of God” and when you are going along to get along? How do you “verify” that you are on the right track?

The Book of Acts is a series of stories about how the disciples, now called apostles, wrestle with this tension. Peter has a vision in which God tells him, quite in opposition to the ways he has learned to be obedient to God’s will, that he should not “call profane what God has made clean.” Philip encounters an Ethiopian eunuch – both foreigner and sexually atypical – doubly “impure” according to everything that Philip has known thus far, and the action of the Holy Spirit moves him to baptize him, to welcome him into the fold. Saul, according to Acts, one of these very same religious authorities from our passage today, a zealous persecutor of the Jesus movement, encounters Jesus on a road to Damascus, in a halo of bright light, and, after three days of silence and blindness, has the scales fall from his eyes, becoming Paul, the apostle to the Greek-speaking world, quite against all he has known.

If we read the Book of Acts, it seems like being uncomfortable is a pretty clear sign that we are following God and not human law. It seems like moving out of previously held assumptions, even previously held convictions, might be a sign of easing that tension. It seems like transformation might be a component of faithfulness. The resurrection life, it would seem, means that we begin to see things differently. The borders that were once in place become more porous. The distinctions we setup between human beings becomes less important. The ways that we divide ourselves from one another fade into a kin-dom vision, where our differences are part of God’s beautifully created diversity rather than sources for mistrust and fear.

For the disciples, now called apostles, the “verification” of the resurrection is the life that they feel compelled to live. Even more than the appearances of Jesus is their realization of his presence in continuing his walk, so they realize he’s there when they share the bread and the wine, he “appears” among them when they gather together to encourage one another in their work. Who they are changes as the resurrection becomes more and more real to them. As they practice Jesus’ border-busting compassion, his agape love, the love for strangers and the marginalized, he lives again. As they re-embrace his moral values, setting aside their fear and following his ethic of Justice, claiming Jesus as Lord, rather than Caesar, the tomb stays empty. As they change, he rises.

This is the resurrection life. It seems like a particularly poignant time in history to suggest that if we are no different post-baptism than we were pre-baptism, if Easter is only to us a day in which we sing, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today”, with no sense of reverence or anxiousness about what that means for us, if being “Christian” just means a signing ceremony and off to business as usual, then we may not be doing it right.

I am not suggesting to you, or to me for that matter, that living faithfully can only be achieved if you are wantonly and aggressively defying governmental authorities, or engaged in actions that are going to get you flogged and tossed out onto the streets. The world doesn’t need more martyrs, but it does need more people willing to engage with difficult and complex issues, to seek truth and to sacrifice in the name of justice. That’s what I think living the resurrection life means, that we at least consider how to reshape the world around us, knowing that there is a gap between charity and justice, and a difference between compassion and enabling. There are borders for us all to cross, everyday – borders that come to us in the form of a well-worn and far too domesticated question. What would Jesus do?

There are currently more than 23,000 municipalities in the United States, yet fewer than 80 are participating in the ICE programs. Tulsa county is one of them. What this means is that a minor traffic violation can land an undocumented person in Tulsa in the hands of ICE, likely to be deported, regardless of their length of stay in the US, their contributions to our society, or their family connections, children and dependents who will often be left behind with primary breadwinners shipped back to countries where they are in danger, or haven’t been in years, perhaps decades.

We also have a contract with ICE which allows up to 200 of the people you are hearing about on our southern border, refugees from countries torn by violence who are seeking asylum, which is legal, to be detained in our county jail downtown, as they are right now…detained without charges, awaiting their asylum hearings.

This could be a question for us about the rule of law and the sovereignty of our borders, or it could be a question about how we will treat the stranger among us, how what we do to the least of these we do to Jesus himself. See, the resurrection life actually asks us not to merely form a better political opinion, to make our views known on a social policy. It asks us to change the way we look, to act on behalf of human beings in need not because we believe in social justice, but because we have been reborn ourselves into God’s Justice, our baptism a little resurrection of our own, bringing with it the same new assumptions about the world post-Easter – God is at work, the light has overcome the darkness, and though we do not understand it at all, Christ is risen.

The implication of “Christ is Risen” is that the Jesus Plan is in full effect, now living on in our hearts, as well as our hands and feet. We have a chance to announce this new vision to the world around us, to be evangelists, though not like you’ve been taught about evangelism. After all, these disciples, now called apostles, they aren’t out asking people if they die tomorrow, where will their soul go? No, their evangelism comes as they feed the hungry, heal the sick, and stand with those whom Rome has cast aside – and then, when people ask them why they are doing this, they speak of this resurrection life, this carrying on of the Jesus plan.

So I ask us – what is our response to the detainment of human beings in our city? Regardless of how you feel politically or ideologically about an immigration system that we all agree is broken, how we treat those among us who have come seeking new life, seeking shelter and opportunity, even those who have broken our human laws says more about who we are as followers of Jesus than anything else. Can we, as Christians, break up families, orphan children, imprison without charge, or detain indefinitely, and still call ourselves Christians? Or will we strive to see the world differently? When we wonder what we can possibly do about horrific violence like we see in Christchurch, in Sri Lanka, and, horribly, again at a synagogue in California just yesterday on Passover, I will suggest to us, as Christians, that it begins with us saying “no” to dehumanizing tactics any and everywhere, “no” to anti-semitism, racism, to white supremacy, to sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, the fear-mongering used to divide and manipulate, and “no” to the violations of human rights and demonization that start long before a gun is wielded against innocents.

We don’t say “no” to this because of a political party or a social agenda. We don’t say “no” to this because we are lefty hippies, though, to be fair, many of us are. We say no because we follow the risen Christ, God’s great “YES” to the Jesus plan, who has told us what we must do, “…for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me…”

Christ is risen. Thanks be to God.

Sermons represent copyrighted material and are not to be reproduced, transcribed, or used in any form without the permission of Rev. Chris Moore or the speaker for that day.

Luke 24:1-12

I’m tempted this Easter morning, my friends, I’m tempted – we have already put on the special clothes, we have already sung the songs and heard the scriptures and announced, “He is risen,” several times, in fact. I’m tempted – you know this story. You know what happens. He is risen! Now let’s go beat the Baptists to Easter brunch! I mean, I’m not revealing something new – were any of you surprised when the scripture declared the tomb was empty? I heard no gasps. We knowthis story.

Do we, though? Because the news today of at least 130 dead in bombings at churches and hotels in Sri Lanka, the anniversaries of Columbine and Oklahoma City, the ways that death and mayhem cling to us like tree sap…

If we knew this story, I think that we’d see some signs of it, don’t you? I mean we know the story of Sam-I-Am, right? He won’t eat green eggs-n-ham. And we know that the moral of the story is that we should try new things – you never know what you might like. Do we know the moral of this story?

It’s really quite remarkable that we have this story at all. We don’t read my favorite version of the empty tomb every year, the earliest version of Mark. Mark, the earliest chronologically of our gospels, is so abrupt in his final chapter that he says as soon as the angel tells them that Christ is not there, the women flee the tomb with terror and amazement and say nothing to anyone, an ending so dissatisfying that it is only in our earliest manuscripts of Mark…the later ones add some verses on to reduce the shock. Can you imagine? They said nothing to anyone? Then what are we up to in here? I mean without the resurrection, Jesus is a really good person who taught some nice things about how we should live and a really handy guy to have around when you have a barrel of water at an impromptu party.

That’s why this story matters, and why I think we still don’t understand the moral of the story – resurrection matters. Now, how it happened, where it happened, whether or not it was real, like flesh-and-blood, or metaphorical, maybe even whyit happened are not the critical pieces to me, as odd as that may sound to you. What matters to me is the happening – the realization that the status quo has been upended and that love is stronger than hatred, stronger even than death – that is the moral.

Yet when faced with this realization, with the stone rolled away and the tomb empty, the women do what I think we’d all do…they get really, really nervous. They get terrified. And when the women in Luke run back to their friends and announce this and all of the guys in the room dismiss the women. I realize this is surprising to the women here today, that their suggestion or story or account would be dismissed by men, but let’s just imaginethis possibility, OK? The Greek word that is used for this dismissal is leros. It gets translated as an “idle tale,” or “nonsense.” What it means is garbage, drivel, crap, or maybe most persuasively a word that I won’t use from the pulpit. This is more than just dismissal, this is disbelief and rejection.

The men are feeling the same thing that the women are feeling – vulnerable. Something has happened, they cannot explain it. They should feel joy – this is what they wanted, right? But they feel confusion, anxiety, even fear, for they don’t have any idea what is going on. So when faced with the option that all of the things that he said to them have come to pass, that God has indeed raised him up after Rome tore him down, that divine power has more say than imperial power, they rejectit. If the moral of this story is that God’s Love and Justice are stronger than our systems of power and dominance…if the moral of this story is that when it seems like all hope is gone, God has not abandoned us…if the moral of the story is that God becomes at-one with us not through violent, wrathful sacrifice, but through non-violent, grace-filled Love, then I have to ask again – do we understand this? Or are we more like the disciples, hearing this glorious news and rejecting it outright? Are we unwilling to be vulnerable enough to know this – because the whole “good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people” is strangely comfortable…we know it’s not true, but it’s comfortable.

Peter goes to see for himself. He finds the tomb, just as they said, sees only a linen cloth and he returns…wondering what happened. That word, in Greek, translated as “wondering,” is the same word used in our passage from Acts this morning, right before Peter announces, “I really am learning that God doesn’t show partiality to one group of people over another.Rather, in every nation, whoever worships God and acts righteously is acceptable to God.This is the message of peace he sent to the Israelites by proclaiming the good news through Jesus Christ: He is Lord of all!” It is something akin to amazement, reverence, awe…so Peter isn’t walking back home trying to figure out what precisely happened, or attempting to rationally work out the details. He’s not worried about making things fit in a logical framework that he can use to sell this theological product, or defend in an apologetics contest. He is walking back home feeling like you do when you first step beyond the horizon of the parking lot and see the Grand Canyon, or when your child is first placed in your arms, or when you feel love for the first time. He is walking back in awe, in amazement, in wonder.

Easter is not about believing, my friends. Easter is about faithing. Now I know that’s not a word in English, but it isa word in Greek. The word pistisused throughout the New Testament is almost always translated as “faith” or “belief,” but it means faithing. The active, “living it out” kind of trust in something you cannot see, in something that is unverifiable, in something that cannot be real, but is. It is maybe even the opposite of what we think belief is, for it works on our hearts and our souls, not in our brains. The story that the disciples reject is the story that they then absorb more slowly, as the Spirit brings it to them, encounter after encounter, realization after realization that God is indeed active in our lives, not as the puppet master controlling all of reality from behind the curtain, but rather as the creative force that brings growth from pain, change from struggle, hope from hopelessness.

Yet that is not an intuitive thing, you know? It’s not something the women had at the tomb, not something the disciples possessed at first, not something that we come to naturally. We have to teachourselves Easter. Oh, we can do it with easy things…a great building full of meaning and history and symbolism burns, the spire crashing to the ground in a fiery metaphor and we rally. We pledge and give and know that rebuilding is possible and imminent and necessary. It does not come as easily for black churches in Louisiana, without the same length of history, to be sure, but with deep symbolism for an entire group of people. We don’t see it in medicaid expansion to give the possibility of life to thousands in our state, we don’t see it in a #metoo movement that isn’t exposing any new behavior, as if there’s a sudden surge of misogyny, it is simply calling out what has alwaysbeen happening to women. We don’t see it in a call for reparations for the untold and unconfessed damage done to an entire group of people whose ancestors were held in slavery for centuries in our country. Those stories where the stone is rolled away from the tomb of insurance death, the tomb of sexism death, the tomb of racism death…we reject those stories, like they are garbage, nonsense, crap.

So we go back to the women in our Easter story for today – one woman in particular. It is Mary Magdalene, who is probably lodged in our collective memories as the prostitute turned follower, the promiscuous woman redeemed by Jesus. There is nothing in the Bible that either says or even suggests this, it is a relic of a smear campaign for centuries against this woman who may indeed have been even more important to the ministry of Jesus than the tradition would care for. It is this Mary who, in other gospels, converses with the risen Christ and returns to the disciples saying, “I have seen the Lord.” And they, just like in Luke, don’t believe her. They say, “That’s a bunch of nonsense.”

Maybe the moral of this Easter story is that we are not to be believed. After all, resurrection from the dead is pretty hard to believe. For all of us, raised in a scientific world, raised to trust what we can verify, quantify and measure, it seems bizarre. Dead is dead. If the dead don’t staydead, what can you believe in? If dead thingAs David Lose says in his commentary, “Resurrection…breaks all the rules, and while most of us will admit that the old rules aren’t perfect – and sometimes are downright awful – at least weknowthem. They are predictable…resurrection upsets all of that.” The idea that Jesus is alive is scary. It means we don’t understand how life and death work anymore. That something and someone dead can become alive again? It’s a holy mystery, and it means that life (and death) are far more complicated than we might have once thought… not as comforting as we imagined…for the implications are we don’t understand a thing, and we are working far more on trust than we thought we were. The question then becomes – trust in what?

We in the church have made this false claim for centuries that faith is about what you believe – about cementing, solidifying, creating certitude around these claims about Jesus rather than learning to trust likeJesus, learning to be faithers. When Mary says, “I have seen the Lord,” she isn’t just making a claim about a miraculous appearance, she is saying utter nonsense about a new reality, laid out before her in a way she absolutely cannot believe – she can onlyfaith.

“I have seen the Lord” insists that the ways of love will always win over the ways of hate. “I have seen the Lord” confirms that the truth of kindness can be heard over the din of ruthless, callous, and vindictive rhetoric. “I have seen the Lord” gives witness to the fact that there is anotherway of being in the world — a way of being that is shaped by resurrection, that embodies anything and everything that is life-giving, a way of being that is so counter-cultural, so demonstrative of mercy, so exemplary of the truth of Easter that when we glimpse it we almost always reject it.

We sing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today” as a statement of belief, one of the laundry list of things that we sign-off on as Christians, as third-person confession. We may sing it loudly, but we don’t really meanit loudly. But what if we were declaring, in bold voice and astonished tone, “I have seen the Lord,” because we trust in resurrection, despite our discomfort with the hows and the whys? We trust in it because we have learned to see life from death, healing from deep wounds, transformation of broken lives, hearts changed, chains broken, and voices heard? What if we bore witness to things we cannot understand, nor explain, hoped in things that it made absolutely no sense to hope for, trusted in the resurrection power of a God who makes all things new? What if we were declaring the triumph of love in the midst of suffering? I tell you, if you report to the world like that, you will be called foolish, and told that you are spreading garbage, nonsense, crap – fake news.

But Easter is not about believing. It is about faithing.

Sermons represent copyrighted material and are not to be reproduced, transcribed, or used in any form without the permission of Rev. Chris Moore or the speaker for that day.

Luke 19:28-40

When we lived in Edmond and the boys were younger, we would take them every 4^thof July to downtown for the annual Independence Day Parade, one of the largest in the nation. We would go with the neighbors on our street, and we had our “spot”, where we’d watch the parade go by and, much later, watch our own kids in the parade, walking with the Boy Scout troop or marching in the band. The 4^thof July parade in Edmond, Oklahoma wasn’t hard to figure out. There was no deception or subtlety in the messaging. America means the military, the fire department, law enforcement, commerce, banks and industry, team spirit and the Miss whatever contest with horns blaring and sirens wailing…oh, and Shriners. So many Shriners in little midget cars and on giant motorcycles, in vintage muscle cars and a few brave souls in clown suits tossing candy. I could stand in the same place I stood as a kid and probably have the same Shroner hand me candy. It was the same every year because parades are meant to convey a message…and dispense candy. Those are the two functions. Now, I don’t know what kind of candy they had in first century Palestine, but I do know that their parades had the same purpose.

Now, Shriners we get. Flatbed trailers with an entire VFW post or another giant service vehicle laden with employees blasting out “And I’m proud to be an American…” for the seventieth time in the parade – these are images and sounds and cultural “hooks” that we get. Palms and donkeys and shouts of “Hosanna” are not. For us it’s an image familiar only because of picture books from our Sunday School days, remember those “Golden” books, likely a very cartoonish, unusually pale Jesus riding on donkey – a donkey who looks a lot like a brown Eeyore. We have no imagination for what other images might be present, no deep, visceral connection to smells or sounds, or phrases shouted…no personal memory connected to this Palm Sunday parade at all. And Hosanna is just a word we hear and sing only around Easter…I mean, no one shouts Hosanna anymore. Can you imagine? I have a half-caf, venti latte for Chris! Hosanna!!!

These hooks don’t catch us, because they weren’t written for us. They are deep remnants of another culture’s history. But what if I gave youthisimage? A man astride a horse, riding fast through the New England countryside, carrying a lantern? And what if he was shouting, “The British are coming, the British are coming!” Who am I talking about?

<Paul Revere>

And what does Paul Revere inaugurate with this midnight ride? What message does he carry, what does he symbolize? <answers from congregation>

Paul Revere announces revolution, and the expectation of freedom, liberation and autonomy. And we all know that by heart, as they say – it is part of our lore, our mythology, our own story, taught to us in a dozen different ways from when we were young. It may not bear any resemblance to what actually happened, but it remains a “living” image, like Jesus on a donkey would have been to the listeners of Luke (and Mark and Matthew and John) hearing this story they had been told before, picturing the images, imagining the sounds just like we do for that midnight ride.

Myths like these come with their own language. The American Revolution certainly has “catch phrases.” Give me liberty or give me ________? Don’t fire until you see ___________________________? For the Palm Sunday story, the word is Hosanna. Hosanna is a term that literally, in Hebrew, means, “save us!” It is the same root that underlies the name Joshua, Hosea, and Yeshua, or Jesus. It is the primary word used during the Hallel Psalms, sung in synagogue during the first two days of Passover which, in the Gospel stories, just happens to be the exact time Jesus is riding into Jerusalem, mimicking the images and stories from the Jewish prophets as he engages in this street theatre through the back gates of the city, deliberately provoking the powers that be using images and language the people would know by heart. If you think that Jesus wasn’t political, his “parade” is proof otherwise – not to mention that, at least in Luke’s version, this parade is preceded by the “parable of the talents” where one servant defies a cruel ruler and the unjust system by he rules with his own actions.

The message was clear to his followers – God was getting ready to do something incredible in their time. God was about to transform their daily world of trouble into a perfect, holy, just city, full of grace — a New Jerusalem, a paradise where God’s will was done by everyone. Zechariah predicted it in scripture! The Messiah, the return of King David, come again to kick out the Romans who had so oppressed and wounded the people. When you have been beaten down, enslaved and treated unjustly for generations, it’s not hard to imagine a party kicking up at the possibility of such monumental change.

Maybe that’s why this story makes it into all four Gospels. That’s a pretty big achievement. The Christmas story, after all, only makes it into 3 gospels. The Lord’s Prayer is only in two, the parable of the Good Samaritan in only one. So, maybe we’re not giving Palm Sunday enough credit. It is typically just the way to start off Holy Week, a blip on the radar and, unless we join new members as we did today,

just another Sunday as we move towards Easter.

Can we appreciate, though, even if just for a minute what a shift this parade represents? Historical research tells us it is likely that at the very same time this parade was happening, with donkeys and palm branches, another parade was entering the main gates of Jerusalem. This one, quite in contrast to Jesus’ ride, looked more like our 4^thof July parades. It was the full might of a Roman garrison on display, leading the Governor of the region, Pontius Pilate, through the gates with full armor, heavy spear, sharp sword and the clear message during the celebration of the high holy time of Passover to not get too celebratory. Remember your place, Hebrews…Rome is in charge.

In that sense, Jesus’ parade was a shift for his followers, who had quietly left their nets and followed him, reflectively, passively following Jesus all across the countryside. But this day? This Palm Sunday? This was the day that they found their voices, if only for a few moments. It was the day they summoned their courage, and assumed their role as witnesses to God’s will on earth as it is in heaven, becoming earnest participants in the realm of God, shouting Hosanna and really believing that God’s salvation was possible…even imminent.

Before this, when Jesus argued with the authorities, they watched, with trepidation. As The Rev. Dr. Nancy Taylor says in her commentary, “When he defended a prostitute, they gasped. When he conversed in public with a woman from Samaria, they winced. When he defied the Sabbath laws, they cringed. When he declared that the last shall be first, the first last, and the rich poor, they glanced around guardedly to see who was listening. When he kissed lepers and healed those of broken bodies, they whispered in fascinated awe.”

For the past three years–from the day Jesus called them from their fishing nets until this moment–the commitment to follow Jesus, it had been personal. It had been intimate and private; but today, this day, Palm Sunday, the commitment to follow Jesus, it becomes public and it becomes political. We know, of course, that this feeling won’t last, that this same crowd will join in with the calls of “crucify him” that will soon come. But let’s just stay here for a single Sunday, a snapshot of hope and promise, if only to know what is possible for church to imagine.

Perhaps Palm Sunday is featured in all four gospels because this is the day the followers of Jesus become actors and leaders, participants in the kin-dom of God. This is the day the church comes out of the closet. This is the day the church distances itself from the state and from all worldly power, ceasing to be the purveyor of the weak language of left versus right and instead the bringer of moral truth. Maybe this day, even more than Pentecost, is this is the day the church is born, and it’s our turn now, ourturn to show the world what Jesus taught us about God, to show the world what love looks like, to show the world what it looks like to love not only your neighbor but your enemy, not only your enemy, but the immigrant and the alien, the stranger, and the other…the endless supply of “the other.” Now it is time to show the world what it looks like to forgive those who trespass against you, to forgive the one who sinned against you–who sinned against you–to forgive this one not once, not seven times, but seventy times seven times. Now is the time to show the world that power is only power when it is given away.

As Rev. Dr. Taylor concludes: In a manifestly violent world, it is now our turn to show the world, to show our friends, our families, our neighbors, our colleagues, what it looks like to follow the Prince of Peace, to turn the other cheek. It’s our turn now. In a merciless world, a dog-eat-dog and might-makes-right world, in a world red in tooth and claw, it’s our turn to show the world what God’s mercy looks like.

Maybe, just maybe, Palm Sunday is in all of our gospels because it launches the church as a place where we can all hear the prophets, see the images of mercy and justice in our heads, hear the songs of protest and passion and find our own conviction, our own courage to be out as Christians, claiming inclusion, social justice and non-violence as things that aren’t along side our faith…they ARE our faith.

It sounds like an amazing opportunity and I hope that excitement and enthusiasm that I can see on the faces out there will be carried out into this world to make a difference…oh, and there’s just one more thing. Doing this…having this kind of vision…making this kind of claim on mercy and grace and love in our world today might just get you yelled at. Make no mistake, it won’t be well received when you tell people that God loves everyone– every. single. other. It might get some negative comments on your social media, or a one-finger salute from someone in the crowd. It might be the death of some relationships. I don’t suspect that any of us will get nailed to a tree, but you might get called all kinds of names, be uninvited from any number of places, maybe even punched in the face. As we will learn in this week to come, speaking long and loud enough about God’s Grace, pushing the right buttons of the political systems, and reaching out to the “wrong” people is what got Jesus in trouble…in fact, it got him more than trouble, it’s what got him killed.

Sermons represent copyrighted material and are not to be reproduced, transcribed, or used in any form without the permission of Rev. Chris Moore or the speaker for that day.

John 8:1-11

This dramatic “midrash” of the story from John was told prior to the scripture reading:

It’s all too easy to throw stones.

Stoning serves many purposes. It quiets anger, satisfies jealousy, provides a scapegoat, transfers shame, masks a guilty conscience, and facilitates control.

Sacred violence is very powerful. To kill in the name of God or God’s law can easily justify our fears and anger, or make our self-righteous hate a holy action that gathers others into its web.

Under the law of Moses there are several offenses worthy of this exercise in execution, so the sacred ritual of throwing stones has long been practiced in our village. Many of the rocks outside our city gates are stained with the sin of those who have broken the law of Moses. And though I am guilty of the sin of which I have been accused, no stones are stained with my blood.

He came to our village, a man we did not know, the man with the piercing eyes. As I stood before my executioners, he touched me, I trembled as I thought he was my accuser, the one to cast the first stone. I bowed my head and prepared to die.

Instead of hurling insults or rocks he turned away from me and toward the angry crowd and in a clear voice he challenged them, “Let anyone who is without sin cast the first stone.” He stood resolute, I thought they would kill him too. Then he knelt down and wrote in the sand with his finger the names of all the men and women of our village who had died of ritual stoning – a daughter, a son, brothers, sisters, a friend. With his words the sacredness of the deadly ritual was broken. Guilt and truth replaced the justification for violence. Fingers loosened their grip on once tightly held instruments of death. As my executioners left, one by one, he turned back toward me and with no accusation in his voice he told me I was forgiven, and to sin no more. As I watched him walk away I searched my soul and asked myself, “exactly what was my sin?”

I had been the property of my father until I was 13, at which time I was given in marriage to a man I did not know and I became his possession. When he died I was given to his brother because property was to be kept in the family. When I outlived him, my son inherited me. By now I was worthless baggage as I was no longer fertile. I found my worth in the arms of a man who was not interested in possessing me but loving me.

What was my sin… that I had disrespected the property rights of those who held power over me? Was I not grateful enough? If I had been purchased would I not have sinned? Did I threaten the economic viability of the family or the community? If I was not punished could all women in the village refuse to be property and expect to be greatly loved?

I soon left my village to find the man with the piercing eyes because I had many questions, and there were frequent rumors of his where-a-bouts. I found him… but not in time to ask my questions. I stood at a distance, with a crowd of women, at a place called Golgotha and watched….

He too had become a victim of legal and sacred violence. But no one was there to write in the sand for him, no one to accuse his accusers.

This man, without even knowing me, said that I was forgiven. Now I watched as he likewise asked God to forgive his tormentors has he hung on the cross.

It was forgiveness that lifted him beyond the rest of us.

Forgiveness…not stones.

This story is not present in our earliest manuscripts of John’s gospel, it simply isn’t there. Many scholars believe this addition doesn’t even show up until as late as the 4^thcentury. Now that could be a whole sermon in itself, but what I find fascinating this morning is wherethe story gets added. It comes right aftera debate among the crowd about whether or not Jesus is the Messiah. Even in Jesus’ time and place, people had all kinds of ideas about the messiah…and Jesus reshaped them all. He re-imagined God for us, re-worked our tribal mindsets and gave us a whole new vision of what the world might be. We’re still shaken by this vision of what life can be, of what he called “God’s Reign” instead of Caesar’s. And nowhere – NOWHERE – is this more apparent than in the way we think about justice, which often looks more like plain ol’ judgment, and how Jesus pursues Grace.

I want to make this story about injustices against women, and there’s plenty of fuel for that. This is not some scenario trapped in history, meaningless to us because, “things like this never happen anymore” – systems that devalue or ignore women, a woman judged with a double standard by a group of men with her life literally or figuratively on the line. Currently there are waves of legislation, in our state and beyond, that seek more and more control over a woman’s body, but never ask any questions about a man’s body, or a man’s role in the reproductive process. We have a former Vice-President and some actions we might dismiss as a simple invasion of personal space, but which really reveal a deeper cultural comment on the bodies of women. I think of comments from colleagues and friends – a woman, in her robe, stole and metal cross necklace, no less – standing in her own church’s narthex, being asked by a visitor if the man walking by is the minister…a clergy friend who is told often that she should work with a local church/pastor without consideration as to whether or not that church/pastor would recognize her ordination, because women pastors are NOT universal…and I had lunch with a clergy colleague the other day and when the bill came – say it with me women in the room, it was set down in front of…me. It’s like every step that is taken forward, there are three steps back, and we know – we KNOW – that this story is about injustice. And I know what I’d like Jesus, the messiah and savior of the world, to do – rain down holy thunder and lightning on the gathered crowd of men. But he doesn’t.

The woman in question in this story from John is not named, not even by her accusers. She’s not even an individual. The text says that the law demands we stone “such women.” She is a typeof woman – a label, a kind that categorically deserves death. Supposedly caught “in the act,” she is the only one dragged into the public square. The man is nowhere to be found, though clearly the accusers know who he is – being caught “in the act” pretty much removes your chances of anonymity. The code from Deuteronomy that prohibits this woman’s activity alsoprohibits the man’s. Heshould be in that public square as well, he should have the arms raised and the stones aimed at his head, too, but he’s nowhere to be found, which makes this text even more convicting as a trap set for Jesus, rather than anything about the supposed “injustice” these men are lifting up.

The unanswered, even unasked, question is – why? Why are these two caught “in the act?” Was this a setup from the beginning, a way to ensnare Jesus by exploiting this relationship which everyone knew about? Did the man also “caught in the act” get released because it was a setup the whole time? Is this a loving relationship or is she a sex worker and, if so, is that by her choice or because it reveals the few options available for women in a patriarchal system that both demands purity and requires lust, a system that values women so minimally?

It is clear from the last line of the passage that even Jesus holds her accountable for something– go, he says, and sin no more. I don’t really know what has happened, or if this woman has really done something “wrong.” What I do know is that when Jesus is asked to denounce her, he refuses, like he does so often, not rejecting the idea of sin, or the reality that we all miss the mark sometimes, but rejecting the idea that we are to be shamed and punished and subjugated because of it. It has to be madecrystal clear, that he rejects the way this is handled. They are trying to trap Jesus to make a public statement and he uses that to call out their hypocrisy, their false piety and the broken system in which they live and breathe and have their being.

Some have questioned a single line in this passage, the one right after they level these charges against this woman and ask him what should be done with her. That line reads, “Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.” What is he writing? Is he writing the commandment from Deuteronomy to emphasize that they have only one party present for this stoning? Maybe, as some suggest, he is writing down the names of the men in that very circle who have alsotaken advantage of this woman, or this “type” of woman, perpetuating the very immorality they claim to be opposing. Then again, maybe he’s just pausing for dramatic effect?

Dr. Amy-Jill Levine notes in her feminist companion to John’s Gospel that surprisingly, at the apex of the story, as we sympathize with this woman and imagine her there, surrounded by a group of angry men, “Jesus places the right of execution directlyin the hands of the scribes and Pharisees…each must examine his own life according to the same Law under which the adulterous woman stands judged.” While this is admittedly brilliant strategy on Jesus’ part, I’m not sure how crazy I’d be about it as the accused woman. After all, they can start hurling rocks if just one of themclaims to be without sin and it’s not hard to imagine an alpha-male pumped up on self-righteousness and arrogance making such a claim. But they don’t. The awareness of their own sin settles in on them and they walk away, disarmed of their capacity to wield their judgment on others.

Jesus, we should note, doesn’t judge them, either. He doesn’t judge anyone in this story, though if Jesus is the one without sin, God in the flesh, as our tradition says, then he, by his own rule, is the onlyone who can judge the men and this woman, now left alone, standing in the hot sand as Jesus looks up. No one has condemned you? Neither do I – go and sin no more.

I wantto make this story about Jesus rebuking the patriarchy, which I still think is true. And others want to make it a clarification of the reality of sin, and how even though we aren’t supposed to judge, we are all still guilty of missing the mark, which is also true. I wonder if this story helps us to see a Jesus who doesn’t operate on “either-or” and, while dedicated to justice, is trying to get us to step outside our carefully constructed boxes, if only for a moment. It is as if he doesn’t want us to simply switch sides in a self-righteous game, where we judge the judges, or hate the haters, and that makes it all alright. I believe that the story wants to place us in a spot where we have a difficult time with who is the “good guy” and who is the “bad guy” precisely because it is such a human thing operate in a polarity. We always divide the story up in sides and equally as often write ourselves into the role of the good guy.

“Let he who is without sin” and “go and sin no more” have the same impact – they are words of grace in an ungracious time. Grace, to be clear, is not forgiveness or absolution. Those things require repentance and restitution. Grace is the radical notion that we are all loved by God regardless of what we do. It is a concept both reassuring and disturbing, one that we love when it is aimed at us and despise when it is shown to those we disparage. That is why I think that we see it only in Jesus. It’s not as if this woman suddenly pours out grace on her accusers. Why should she? She is trapped in a system that absolutely devalues and destroys her. And the men? They are happy to getgrace, but in no danger, I suspect, of being tainted by it enough to dole it out.

That’s the same for all of us, for I don’t think this story is meant to teach us all to have God’s grace, a Grace I do not understand and struggle to accept. If there’s one thing I am clear about from a long tenure in ministry, it’s that there is a God and I am not Her. I cannot dole out such grace. I am about justice, and my justice is pretty limited and awfully judgy. So, can I hear this morning how Jesus is steering us away from the propensity to refine our abilities of judgment and towards trusting in God’s Grace, letting it shape how we see ourselves and our world? Can I accept how God’s grace sets us free from the constant tennis match of judgment – not because accountability isn’t important, it is crucial – but because it isactually liberating when you become aware of sin as something that unifies us in our incompleteness, rather than a weapon to be used against your so-called opponent. Jesus wants more than just a revolution, he seeks a revolution of our hearts, pushing us to see the humanity and divinity in each of us so deeply that we decide to leave the judgment to God, transforming the world in steps – from vengeance and the settling of scores to justice and then, finally, to a world filled with Grace – wasteful, expansive, amazing Grace.

Amen.

Sermons represent copyrighted material and are not to be reproduced, transcribed, or used in any form without the permission of Rev. Chris Moore or the speaker for that day.

Psalm 32 1-2 & 8-11

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner tells the story of leading a tour of the prayer hall with the preschool children from the congregation. He takes them to the front of the sanctuary to show where the ark is, where they store the torah scroll behind a large, floor to ceiling curtain. He was just about to ask what was behind the curtain and do the big reveal when he notices the preschool teacher looking straight at him and tapping her watch which, he says, is an old Talmudic gesture meaning to wrap it up, bucko! So he tells them that at their next meeting he’ll show them what’s behind the curtain, and it’s very special…and sends them off with a shalom and they walk behind their teacher like little ducklings back to class. Well, the next day the teacher shows up in his office to tell him that apparently the preceding day’s hastily cancelled lesson has provoked quite a discussion of what is indeed behind the “very special” curtain. She told him there are currently four possibilities, according to four different kids.

The first kid, obviously destined to become a philosophy professor, suggests that behind that curtain is absolutely nothing. Such nihilism at such a young age. The next kid imagines a Jewish holy thing of some sort, fairly non-descriptive but important. Another kid, probably from watching too much morning TV says that behind that curtain is a brand new car!! And lastly is the kid who tells them they’re all wrong…behind that curtain is a giant mirror. A four-year old somehow knows that in the words of ancient scripture she would encounter herself, for this is the role of this old, old, stories, some of which make little sense to us anymore. It’s not rulebook or instruction manual, it is a mirror, helping us to see ourselves in new ways, with old words.

This is indeed what must happen with this parable of the lost sons, most often known as the parable of the “Prodigal Son”, though the word prodigal is never used in this passage, it’s a title added much later. Though it is one of the most commonly known parables, next to probably the “Good Samaritan,” Luke is surprisingly the only gospel where this parable can be found. It is familiar to us –veryfamiliar. Likewise it’s meaning is already clear – this is a parable about repentance and forgiveness, right? The younger son is us, the father is…well, THE Father, and the older son is the “bad guy,” not finding the grace that the father gives so freely.

Well, not so fast. The lectionary cut we have for today makes sure to place the parable within it’s context, as part of a conversation between Jesus and his critics, who are shocked by his dining companions. They are scandalized by who he has decided to welcome to his table, these “sinners.” And, you know, birds of a feather flock together – you’ll be known by the company you keep. That’s not just a saying from our time, but actually written in Proverbs 13. So, Jesus was hanging out with the “wrong” kind of people. And in response to this charge, this utterance of what was common sense, found in scripture, Jesus tells this parable, turning the conversation on its head.

In fact he tells three parables, just to drive his point home, the lost sheep, the lost coin and then the lost sons. And in all three cases, the theme is notcontrition and forgiveness, it is welcome and grace. The sheep isn’t apologetic, the coin never says, “I’m sorry,” and there is no forgiveness given, only celebration of the lost being found. And the same is true of the prodigal. The son never apologizes, the father never forgives. It is as if the parable is not meant to teach us some easily digestible message, but rather reminds us of the way that God works, that infuriating, grace-filled love, which is something we already know, but just can’t quite swallow.

When we begin this story with the father as protagonist, the younger son as pitiable foil and the older son as callous jerk, then the mirror that a parable could be becomes more of a script, with all of the parts playing out predictably. Parables, however, work best with the game of “what ifs.” As a colleague, the Rev. Jes Kast, said on Twitter yesterday, “What if the story of the Prodigal Son is not about a son who messed up, but about a Father who messed up and disowned his son who was gay or transgender and finally repents and the celebration is a Dad who says to his son “I see you and affirm YOU. I was wrong. I love you?” What if it’s about how eachchild feels righteous, and stands firm, demanding the other side come to them, when all God wants is for us to eat dinner together? What if it’s about the mother, who is never mentioned, who laments teaching this boy to have such willfulness, leaving her wallowing in her prideful inability to show her wounds and her shameful dedication to the expectations of culture over her son’s direction? There are a lot of “what ifs” to be had in this single story.

So, maybe I ought to treat this like a therapist – so when you ask me what this parable means, I answer – I don’t know. What do youthink it means? And then, of course, as you come up with answers, I’d ask you to consider the version of the story that is the least palatable to you. If the reading only makes you comfortable, then perhaps you look again. For this is what a look in the mirror does, it might make us notice that our hair looks particularly good that day – well, at least someof us – but it likely also reveals the flaws we know and try to conceal or deny. So, who are you in this parable? Which son are you? Are you the father, or the absent mother? Are you the grumbling religious authorities to whom these stories of the lost are told? Are you the narrator, speaking to someone about the complicated scenarios that face us as human beings, trying to share how things aren’t always so cut and dry, and our morality or sense of justice not so easily “right” or “wrong?”

We live in times of great moral confusion. And while we are most often offered a binary solution – right and wrong, good and evil, neatly packaged and separated, the ethical and moral dimension that Jesus always presents us with resists such simplicity. Jesus encourages us not to refine our sense of judgment, but to hone our capacity to love, which stands quite against our inclination to pick and side and to win the battle, whatever that battle may be. Those battles, I’m afraid, are often fought in the dark, and in the light of day things can look quite different than they do when we are flailing away with our sword of righteousness.

As the work was happening for not only this sermon, but the artwork that you see hanging up here this morning, the good Rev. Curry emailed me a selection from some of the reflections that inmates at David L. Moss produce, this one from a guy named Brett. Brett, in reflecting on his own journey of healing, writes that alcoholics and drug addicts often have “the opportunity to have two lives, one on self-will and one on God’s will.” It is those people who truly understand the language of coming to their senses, as the text says, of coming to their selves, as the Greek actually says. They understand, if they are lucky enough to find someone else to receive their newfound sense, what it means to be dead and then alive again, the true essence of being “reborn.”

Brett says that, “I was lucky enough to experience a life full of “myself” will;

living on my terms, my attitude and actions and the consequences one receives living a life of self will and pain.” Of course, not many would look at that as “lucky,” but Brett’s “rebirth” came when he, “had a spiritual awakening.” “I now,” he writes, “get to live a life on God’s will doing what is in front of me working to become a better person,

asking for God’s guidance and direction in every part of my life.”

I’m not sure that this is what is going on with the youngest son. To be frank, I don’t really trust him. I still feel, even after he returns, like he is again taking advantage of his father’s love, like he is doing what he has always done. But for any of us who have been used by someone, someone who we know has a sickness but still makes us angry, this younger son sets off some alarms. And the older son seems so lost in his own bitterness and resentment that he can’t take even the smallest of steps in a positive direction. From this perspective, both sons are lost. Perhaps this is why the father reacts the way he does.

Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt. Dr. Levine urges us not to rush to read repentance and forgiveness into this parable. We have been programmed to think thatparables draw a contrast between what Jesus taught and what “the Jews” generally understood. Thus, the Prodigal Son teaches about a loving God, whereas Judaism teaches an angry, vengeful God. But a loving, forgiving, gracious God is not an invention of Jesus, it is part of the Judaism from which he preached and taught. Dr. Levine suggests we ought to let parables provoke us more deeply, to consider how Jesus was provoking his own audience to things they were already aware of and, in the case of this parable of lost sons to a pretty radical idea of just how subversive welcome can be. It’s something we already know about. What happens when we choose to invite someone in first, before we deem them worthy, before we see an olive branch in their hand, before we know that everything will work out the way we want it to? What is the best way, one might ask, to get the wayward to return?

Dr. Levine writes, “Do whatever it takes to find the lost – sheep, coin or child, – and then celebrate with others…Don’t wait until you receive an apology; you may never get one. Don’t wait until you can muster the ability to forgive; you may never find it…instead, go have lunch. Go, celebrate, and invite others to join you. If the repenting and the forgiving come later, so much the better. And if not, you will still…have begun a process that might lead to reconciliation. Take advantage of resurrection,” she writes, “it is unlikely to happen twice.”

I don’t know if I can hear that interpretation, much less implement it. Such a selfless approach takes a hard look in the mirror, my friends, though I think that we know it is true that we welcome before we belong, before we forgive, before we repent. Nevertheless, such a way of reading this parable is challenging and difficult and doesn’t really make sense in my way of structuring relationships, values and my own sense of righteousness. Which makes me think it’s probably pretty close to Jesus’ intent…showing us a God who’s love is different than ours, who’s goals are different than ours, and who’s grace is much wider, much broader that ours. It’s hard, maybe nearly impossible to expand our hearts that much, to extend ourselves so far out onto that branch, all in the name of God’s kin-dom.

Can you imagine what the world would look like if we did?